2 comments:

OK!There are some thumbnails here with some nice depth and some interesting shapes. But there aren't enough thumbnails to really get into the feel of your city.

The camera angles you are looking at are a really good ideaI suggest you spend some time researching perspective drawing (there are loads of books in the library) as this will help you get some interesting angles on the layout.

THe cities you have researched are all brightly lit, so have a look at some more dystopian cities too.Google stills for the film Blade Runner (1982 dir. Ridley Scott) and Metropolis (1927, dir. Fritz Lang). Both films use perspective to suggest size and atmosphere.

Now - my first bit of advice is 'go back to Calvino's description' - because he described a city that is suspended between mountains 'like' a spider-web; in other words, it's supported by a series of strands, cables and connections (none of which have to resemble a 'web' literally - indeed there are lots of different sorts of spider-web constructions apart from the classic 'spider-man' one). Calvino actually describes more detail than this too - describing a sort of suspended 'underbelly' of hanging stuff/things/artefacts and objects. In this way, Octavia doesn't read as a 'solid' city, but rather as something a bit more precarious and modular - made of units strung together, perhaps. You're looking at skyscraper imagery, but ask yourself in a city that would always be flexing in the winds up at the tops of the mountains, would the structures really be concrete like that? The point I want to make is ask yourself a series of questions about this city that will inspire you to be inventive - little questions, for example - how is the city held together when it must always be moving/shifting/swaying/quivering? How do its people collect water to drink - from rainfall, obviously - but how do they collect it, in what - and where does it go?

I want you to look at the following OGRs for your classmates also doing Octavia, as I've left a wealth of visual reference, which I'd also like you to explore now and reflect on: